Chambersburg was an early village on the New Troy Pike. It was platted in 1830 and apparently did collect some houses and such.
The Dayton & Troy ran on private ROW, but moved to street-running through pre-existing settlements. In this case the line bypassed the town. And the line had two stations on either side of the bypass, named Murlin Heights, after the traffic manager.
The only other place in the Miami Valley were something similar happened was at New Lebanon, where another interurban (with the same investor, Valentine Winters) bypassed the town and used a different name for the station.
The interurban ROW still appears on the property maps. And there are still traces of the line on the ground , too, via property lines and various subtle features of the landscape.
What's not evident is the loop for the local passenger service that was supposed to be here.
One the south side of Murlin Heights (south of Chambersburg/Little York Road), one can see a tree line and what looks like a road. Perhaps the route of the old roadbed and right of way?
On the north side of Murlin Heights the vegitation seems to follow the line of the curve of the ROW as heads back to following Old Troy Pike, or Dixie Drive.
And in the mid-section, maybe more as property lines, though one can see a small tree line that marks the old roadbed a bit clearer in the midsection of village.
But maybe not much of a village anymore. By the looks of the aeriel pix most of the old side streets of the plat have been vacated and the original structures replaced by smallish commercial things with the predictable parking lot in front. Readers familiar with mostly intact rural villages of the Miami Valley will recall that structures are usually much closer to the roads and streets, particularly those of antebellum provenance.
There are a few structures on site that do indicate commuter traffic as they follow the bungalow and foursquare typologies popular during the interurban era Plus a few small side-street plats showing real estate speculation was occuring here prior to the Depression.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Dayton & Troy @ Chambersburg/Murlin Heights
The Dayton & Troy/Lima Route Interurban Railroad
Built in 1901 and closed in 1932 for a good 30 years of operation. The D & T drove the development of the Northridge area, and also suburban development for points north.
The builders were the Clegg family (local industrialists and real estate speculators) and Valentine Winters (a banker who was involved with other traction lines out of Dayton).
It's unclear where the stops were. The map below is a best guess based on available sources. There were three stops in Vandalia, at least two in Chambersburg, renamed Murlin Heights, after the traffic director of the D&T. There was also a stop at the cematary between Murlin Heights and Stop Eight.
And the seven stops in Northridge + one in Dayton at the old McCook Field.
The line also ran a local service as far as Murlin Heights/Chambersburg, were there was a turn-around loop. Presumably this local made more frequent stops to serve the plats that made up Northridge.
The line was a mix of single and long runs of double track. Suprsingly the section through Northridge wasn't double-tracked as there is an account of a grisly accident on single track: A fast moving northbound regular train missed signal or train order, rammed a stopped local car and partially telescoping it, resulting in injurys and deaths.
D & T Rolling Stock
The alpha and omega of the passenger equipment. Top image is an early Barney & Smith car (made in Dayton) from 1902. As one can see this resembled standard railroad passenger coaches, as did most early interurban equipment. Dayton-based B&S used to specialize in passenger cars, but moved into interurban busines, which kept it alive into the 20th century.
The bottom car was the last passenger equipment bought by the D&T. Built by the Cincinnati Car Company in 1929, it was nearly the last word on interurban design. Built more like a streetcar, with the front and rear folding doors and lower floorboard. It looks fast, and had a eye-catching orange and maroon color scheme.
Electric Fast Freight
Most interurbans had some freight buiness, usually "less than carload", or LCL, freight. These were usually handled by baggage compartments or "box motors", like the car below. Sort of a powered freight car.
The D&T, however, did generate substantial freight business, operated on a "just-in-time" basis via trains scheduled on demand. So the line also had a fleet of freight cars, one shown in the lower pic. D&T line had two Dayton freight houses, one downtown (still standing about a block north of the 2nd Street Market), and the other off Keowee Street. At the peak the D&T handled about 500K tons of freight daily. Freight service declined after 1926, when PUCO started to grant long distance trucking franchises.
More Passenger Equipment.
The upper car is a longer passenger car than the early Barney & Smith equipment. D&T also had a short-lived sleeping car service since trains did eventually go north to Toledo, and a dining car.
Though we've seen single cars so far, the D & T was prepared to run multi-car trains. The line bought a number of passenger coaches from the New Haven railroad to supplement its powered equipment. Apparently steam road and interurban passenger equipment was compatible...at least in the early days.
Dayton & Troy and Early Northridge Suburbia.
The following map shows the area of the very first suburban plats along New Troy Pike, the one most likely generated as by the arrival of the interurban, and how the platting worked around the interurban.
The line ran on the west side of New Troy Pike. Most plats on that side accomodated the line by running a frontage road paralleling the right of way, resulting in the line running down a sort of median between the frontage road and Troy Pike.
The two official stops were "Stop 3" at Ridge Avenue, and "Stop 4" at Ebenezer (intersection of Frederick Pike). The local service might have been more informal stops, as the ones shown here don't look all that convenient for some of the plats.
Coming soon, a closer look at Neff Park and the northern sections of Garden City.
(pix are from Daves' Railpix, which has good documentation for the other Dayton interurbans and streetcar companies)
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Ebenezer
1 Samuel 7-12: Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, and called the name of it Ebenezer, saying, Hitherto hath the LORD helped us.
And that is the source of the old place name on the New Troy Pike. First given to the oldest congregation and church in Northridge, the old Ebenezer Methodist Church. But later expanded to then entire crossroads area, and eventually the school district that was formed in the early 1920s.
The congreation formed up in the years after the War of 1812. The first church was a log and clapboard structure on what is now the northwest corner of the Dixe Drive/Frederick Pike intersection.
In 1860 a replacement church was built on the southwest corner of the intersection, and this church still stands today.
Here is the church when it was still a church, in the background with the belfry. In the foreground is the station for the Dayton & Troy interurban railroad. One can see the semaphore signal and the station name board.
Roughly the same scene today. The interurban tracks are gone and New Troy Pike is widened todays Dixie Highway. The old church still stands but is now a business.
Looking at the old Ebenezer Church from a different angle. One can see the tall windows that one would expect for the sanctuary.
The best source for Northridge history, "Life on the Ridge" (put together by Northridge HS students as a class project) says one of the early schools was located here, and is still standing. This might be it. Built in the 1880s to serve the farming community of this part of Harrison Township.
As we've seen in a prior post the New Troy Pike corridor was the site of early suburbanization due to the interurban. Apparently population grew enough to warrant a replacement for the old Ebenezer church of 1860. In 1919 the new church opened, and the congregation renamed itself the Victory Methodist Church. Apparently this was double meaning. Victory over sin and also victory in World War I, which had ended in the previous year.
The new building was this quasi-English gothic affair done up in random rubble stone.
And Victory Methodist is still there today, but in expanded form. A landmark on the Dixie strip from the early days of suburbia.
(on edit, some modern images of the church, showing the addition and some adjacent prewar housing)
The Villages of North Clayton- bankrupt!
Dayton's only true New Urbanist subdivision, Villages of North Clayton, is being taken to bankruptcy court"
$6 Million Owed, Bank Wants to Foreclose
This sounds a lot like Newfields. The parallels are so close: Innovative (for its time) multi-use developement proposed for the north/northwest suburbs but goes belly-up due to a bad economy and maybe a bad location (slow-growth side of town).
I guess the question would be if this would have been in Greene or Warren County would it have faired better? There is Stonehill Village out beyond Beavercreek, that is trying to do some more innovative site planning, but as of now it's not really as New Urbanist as the Villages of North Clayton.
I guess add this the list of innovative Dayton-area projects that went nowhere.
(tip of the hat to commentor "Joe" who provided the DDN article info)
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Kettering Tower Facing Foreclosure: Symbolic...
...of a few things, actually.
The Failure of Dayton: Skyscrapers are totemic structures, and the tallest building in a city usually has some signifigance, the home to the major bank or corporation or a personal statement by a sucessful local buisnessman. Thus the bankruptcy of the Kettering Tower, the tallest building on the skyline, is a nice visual shorthand for the economic and social failure (or, at best, stagnation) of the Dayton region.
The Death of Downtown: The Kettering Tower's vacancy rate was not reported. But we do known that the downtown vacancy rate is around 30%-40%...and thats just the buildings that are actually still on the market. Very few businesses and proffessionals want to locate downtown so no one to lease to. Recall that skyscrapers exist mainly for economic reasons, that land prices and demand for space is so high that it makes economic sense to go "up". In downtown Dayton the tendancy isn't to go "up" anymore but to go "parking lot" or grassy field. The latest "market signal" for a large downtown property was the Arcade auction, sold to a single bidder for around $600,000 - $700,000.
The Decline of the Skyscraper: Maybe not that popular of a building type anymore? It seems the campus concept and midrise/lowrise construction is more popular for office space in the smaller metro areas. Form follows finance and maybe tall buildings dont make financial sense in certain markets.
It should be noted that the Kettering Tower is not foreclosed yet. The court has appointed a reciever, which is CB Richard Ellis. The double irony is the CBRE is the agent for NCR's sale of their former corporate HQ, and was the agent (along with Miller Valentine) for the 2005 sale of the tower by the Kettering Trust to the currrent owners (a NY investment partnership).
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Negative DDN Comment of the Week: "Indian Country"
I like this one as it illustrates the Wright-Patterson AFB employees perspective (well, at leat one employee but (s)he is probably representative. Cute reference to Indian County, but one wonders how one drives from Warren County through Dayton to the base.
2009-06-16 12:45:44.6
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Strickland's NCR Money In Play: Some Questions & Comments
There is some good and not-so-good reporting by the DDN in the last few days, lifting the veil a bit on things work, or don’t work, in this area. Particularly this article, which follows up on some earlier news.
The basic outline is that Srickland had made that $30M offer to NCR to stay in Dayton, and this NCR money may still be on the table.
Using Strickland's NCR Money to Subsidize Austin Road Site Development
Montgomery County, the Dayton Development Coalition and the Chamber of Commerce are making play for the money on behalf certain job creation/economic development initiatives, one of which is some unspecified “infrastructure” development at Austin Road.
Past reports on DDC earmark requests suggest that this may be to subsidize site development of RG Properties “Innovation Point” at the interchange, not for actual road work on Austin, Byers, or Springboro Pike. The cost in the request to Strickland is $6M, just a bit off from the $6.7M in the earmark request, so its reasonable to assume the money if for the same or similar things.
This is where the reporting fails, as we don’t known what is being done under the generic term “infrastructure”. Is it corporate welfare for RG Properties, or is it true public works stuff on state and county highways?
The County/DDC/CoC Plan and Dayton City Officials
The other juicy tidbit in this and a previous article is how Dayton city government (the commission and manager) were shut-out of the play. So far we’ve read that the mayor and city manager were not aware of the letter proposing new plans for the money, or maybe aware and not having time to comment, as we see Rashad Young chose his words carefully
Dayton City Manger Rashad Young said he had no opportunity to review or offer input on strategies outlined in the Dayton Region Rapid Response Economic Development Recovery Plan.
Maybe not a big deal since this seems to be a county/DDC/CoC intiative. Except there’s more.
What wasn’t reported was that at least one other commission was aware of this initiative. That would be Joey Williams, since his signature is actually on the letter to Strickland. This opens up even more questions:
First: Why was Joey Williams involved in the first place if this was a county proposal?
Second: Why didn’t Joey Williams bring this initiative to the attention of at least his city manager?
Third : What about Nan Waley and Matt Joseph? Totally out of the loop, or not?
So, a place where one would like to see some follow-up reporting.
The article goes on to quote and paraphrase county commissioner Dan Foley:
“Everybody knows the city needs all of our attention,” said Foley, adding county commissioners must be champions for all communities in the county.
Foley is quite correct, Dayton is just one of many incorporated communities in the county (and there are still large areas of unincorporated land, rural and suburban), and would benefit as much as any other locality from a generalized economic development initiative.
The Return of Revenue Sharing?
And there’s even more. A bullet point in the article notes:
Strategy will be developed for the city of Dayton to benefit from the job growth associated with this plan even if the new jobs created aren’t located in the city.
This sounds a lot like the revenue-sharing mitigations proposed to get Dayton city government on-board for the construction of I-675 back in the 1970s. So, interesting stuff going down in the wake of the NCR news. Lets hope Strickland is still good for that $30M.
